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#+TITLE: Phundrak’s polybar config
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* Table of Contents :TOC_4_gh:noexport:
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-c7ab05d0-4c5f-4a4c-8603-4c79e264141c
:END:
- [[#presentation][Presentation]]
- [[#general-settings][General settings]]
- [[#colors-declaration-for-polybar][Colors declaration for polybar]]
- [[#declaration-of-the-bars][Declaration of the bars]]
- [[#top-bar-declaration][Top bar declaration]]
- [[#positioning][Positioning]]
- [[#colors-and-display][Colors and display]]
- [[#fonts-and-locale][Fonts and locale]]
- [[#modules][Modules]]
- [[#bottom-bar-declaration][Bottom bar declaration]]
- [[#positioning-1][Positioning]]
- [[#colors-and-display-1][Colors and display]]
- [[#fonts-and-locale-1][Fonts and locale]]
- [[#modules-1][Modules]]
- [[#modules-2][Modules]]
- [[#hardware][Hardware]]
- [[#battery][Battery]]
- [[#filesystem][Filesystem]]
- [[#xbacklight][Xbacklight]]
- [[#acpi-backlight][ACPI backlight]]
- [[#cpu][CPU]]
- [[#memory][Memory]]
- [[#wlan][Wlan]]
- [[#ethernet][Ethernet]]
- [[#volume][Volume]]
- [[#temperature][Temperature]]
- [[#software][Software]]
- [[#window-title][Window title]]
- [[#i3][i3]]
- [[#workspace-icons][Workspace icons]]
- [[#focused-workspaces][Focused workspaces]]
- [[#visible-workspaces][Visible workspaces]]
- [[#unfocused-workspaces][Unfocused workspaces]]
- [[#urgent-workspaces][Urgent workspaces]]
- [[#mpd][Mpd]]
- [[#date][Date]]
- [[#footnotes][Footnotes]]
* Presentation
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-03c830ff-e6a9-426c-8d98-8ffb8a79b1d1
:END:
Polybar is a desktop utility for displaying various information in form of
bars for GNU/Linux systems. It is often used as a replacement for native bars
available in window managers, such as i3. In my case, I use two instances of
polybar in order to get two bars displayed on each screen. The information
displayed is either related to i3 itself, or it is system information, such as
CPU or disk usage. More information will be given and explained below.
If you want to learn more about how to configure Polybar, you can go to its
[[https://github.com/jaagr/polybar][official repository on Github]].
#+BEGIN_EXPORT latex
Be aware that this PDF documents suffers from a couple of issues with some
characters such as emojis. If you wish to see everything correctly, I would
suggest you to take a look at the online HTML version of this document.
#+END_EXPORT
* General settings
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-c4387167-95ea-4349-a5d9-4ebdcffccc97
:END:
Some general settings are available for Polybar, and they are declared under
the ~[settings]~ section.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
[settings]
#+END_SRC
Only one setting is used in this configuration though: the ability to relauch
polybar on a configuration file rewrite.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
screenchange-reload = true
#+END_SRC
Some global settings are also available in order to adjust the
~_NET_WM_STRUT_PARTIAL~ top and bottom values:
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
[global/wm]
margin-top = 32
margin-bottom = 22
#+END_SRC
* Colors declaration for polybar
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-7adb4647-995d-4f75-846c-6f7f3e15487a
:END:
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows :exports none
; -*- mode: conf-windows -*-
#+END_SRC
Like most status bars available, we can declare custom colors to be used in
polybar. This part of the configuration file is declared with the following
header:
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
[colors]
#+END_SRC
As I use pywal as a color scheme generator based on the color of my wallpaper,
I need to tell polybar to fetch the colors it will use from xrdb. If such
color cannot be used, other colors will be used as fallback colors. First,
let’s declare our default background and foreground colors with their
alternative option.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
background = ${xrdb:color1:#50000000}
background-alt = ${xrdb:color2:#444}
foreground = ${xrdb:color7:#dfdfdf}
foreground-alt = ${xrdb:color6:#555}
#+END_SRC
Now, we can also declare our primary and secondary colors.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
primary = #ffb52a
secondary = #e60053
#+END_SRC
Polybar is also aware of alerts sent by window managers such as i3 when a
window opens in an unfocused workspace. For that, let’s declare an alert
color.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
alert = #bd2c40
#+END_SRC
* Declaration of the bars
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-9c14f550-d104-4b45-a7a4-04a6f2c32e00
:END:
It is possible in i3 to declare as many bars as we wish, and each of these
bars will be named. Naming the bar is done in its module declaration like so:
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows :tangle no
[bar/nameofthebar]
#+END_SRC
In my configuration, I use two of such bars, one atop of my screen, and one at
the bottom.
** Top bar declaration
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-ff6e9020-b3d9-4da9-b351-29a4b914d3c4
:END:
As unimaginative as it might seem, I went for a rather explicit name for my
bars. The top one is simply named ~top~, as shown below.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
[bar/top]
#+END_SRC
*** Positioning
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-6c670bf7-0904-4b5c-8551-540212f16e25
:END:
We need to set on which screen the bar is to be displayed. Indeed, it is
possible to display a bar on only one specific screen if we wish to.
Actually, it is even the default behavior of polybar, but as we will see
later with the launching script, it is possible to launch bars on multiple
outputs at the same time. Here, we simply get the value of the variable
~monitor~ from the launch environment.
#+NAME: monitor-bar
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
monitor = ${env:MONITOR}
#+END_SRC
We have a few position-related variables that need to be set. We can specify
whether or not we want our bar at the bottom of the screen —which is the
default behavior of polybar—, its width, its height, the radius for the
rounding of its corners and whether the bar should be centered or not. In my
case, my bars are rather small height-wise, and it occupies most of the
width of my screens. There is some gaps between this bar and the border of
the screen, but this is due to a border around the bar itself which acts not
only on the width of the bar itself, but also on its height.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
bottom = false
border-size = 5
<>
#+END_SRC
#+NAME: position-bar-top
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows :exports none :tangle no
width = 100%
height = 22
radius = 10.0
fixed-center = true
#+END_SRC
We also want to add some padding to our bar so our modules are not too close
to its edges, especially due to the rounding of the top bar.
#+NAME: padding-bar
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
padding-left = 2
padding-right = 4
#+END_SRC
Each module will have some padding around it, so that modules aren’t glued
together and instead have some room to breathe. The padding on the left is a
bit less than the padding on the right for aesthetic reasons.
#+NAME: module-margin-bar
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
module-margin-left = 1
module-margin-right = 2
#+END_SRC
The top bar doesn’t include any system tray, so let’s disable that.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
tray-position = none
#+END_SRC
*** Colors and display
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-9f83a6fd-652a-45ca-894b-0a0e0d3f0084
:END:
As explained above, we declared some global variables when it comes to
colors, and this is where they will be used. The bar’s background will be of
the same color as the main background color declared earlier, and the same
goes for the foreground.
#+NAME: bar-colors
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
background = ${colors.background}
foreground = ${colors.foreground}
#+END_SRC
If we wanted, we could also declare a default color for the underlines under
the various modules that will be included in the bar, but in our case this
variable is unused. So we will simply add this commented line as a memento
this is possible, but it won’t have any effect with this current
configuration of polybar. Same goes for the border around the bar, it is a
useless variable in this configuration since we want the border to be
transparent.
#+NAME: line-border-color
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
line-color = #f00
; border-color = #00000000
#+END_SRC
Although the variable for the default line color is not used, we still have
to set the default width of the underline of our modules. By default, their
underline will be three pixels thick.
#+NAME: line-size-bar
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
line-size = 3
#+END_SRC
*** Fonts and locale
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-c5660945-4785-40f7-b89e-f9f31b85a062
:END:
Now we can chose which font fill be used in order to display text in this
bar, as well as the locale we want. The locale will be useful for displaying
information such as date and time, which is a module we will have in this
top bar. First, the declaration of the locale is done like so:
#+NAME: locale-bar
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
locale = ja_JP.UTF-8
#+END_SRC
Now, we can declare the fonts we want to use in Polybar. It is possible to
declare several of them, the first one is the one which gets the absolute
priority, and the next ones with a larger index are fallback fonts. Font
declaration accepts the fontconfig format as well as possible offset[fn:1].
Five fonts are used in my polybar config:
#+NAME: fonts-polybar
| Font | fontconfig | Vertical offset | Why it’s used |
|--------------+----------------------------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------------|
| Fira Sans | Fira Sans Book:style=Book:pixelsize=10 | 1 | Text display |
| IPA Mincho | IPAMincho:style=regular:pixelsize=6 | 0 | Japanese text display |
| Unifont | unifont:fontformat=truetype:size=6:antialias=false | 0 | Fallback font |
| NotoEmoji | NotoEmoji:style=Book:scale=16 | 0 | Emoji display |
| Siji | Siji:pixelsize=8 | 0 | Symbol display |
| Default font | fixed:pixelsize=8 | 0 | Fallback font |
#+NAME: font-config
#+BEGIN_SRC python :var table=fonts-polybar :cache yes
for i in range(0, len(table)):
print("font-{0} = {1};{2}".format(i, table[i][1], table[i][2]))
#+END_SRC
#+RESULTS[a055f871fdabec995b015a8f083a77b0096a9c7f]: font-config
: font-0 = Fira Sans Book:style=Book:pixelsize=10;1
: font-1 = IPAMincho:style=regular:pixelsize=6;0
: font-2 = unifont:fontformat=truetype:size=6:antialias=false;0
: font-3 = NotoEmoji:scale=12:style=Book;0
: font-4 = Siji:pixelsize=8;0
: font-5 = fixed:pixelsize=8;0
Here’s the font configuration:
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
<>
#+END_SRC
Note that only Fira Sans get a small offset due to the size of the font and
the height of the bar itself.
*** Modules
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-93f91f00-620c-4d09-846b-9e40c304fdaf
:END:
Finally, arguably one of the most important parts of our bar configuration:
the module selection. Modules can be positioned in three different parts of
our bar: to the right, in middle or to the left. On the left, we want our
workspace indicator for i3. In the middle, we’ll get the title of the
focused window, and to the left we’ll have the date and time.
#+NAME: modules-generate
#+BEGIN_SRC python :var table=[] :results value :cache yes
left = 'modules-left = '
center = 'modules-center = '
right = 'modules-right = '
for line in table:
if line[1] == 'left':
left += line[0] + ' '
elif line[1] == 'center':
center += line[0] + ' '
else:
right += line[0] + ' '
return left + '\n' + center + '\n' + right
#+END_SRC
Here is the list of modules used:
#+NAME: top-modules
| Module name | Position | Brief description |
|-------------+----------+----------------------------|
| i3 | left | i3 workspace indicator |
| xwindow | center | Name of the focused window |
| date | right | Date and time |
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows :cache yes
<>
#+END_SRC
Each module will be described in details later in this document.
** Bottom bar declaration
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-2478b0a6-1727-45fb-b8df-3f9aac2f0f5f
:END:
As described above, we will once again have to declare our bar with an
equally unimaginative but explicit name.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
[bar/bottom]
#+END_SRC
*** Positioning
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-31291b7e-d1df-493a-bcb2-8decab434044
:END:
The variables are the same as above, but two of them will be slightly
modified:
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
bottom = true
border-size = 0
<>
#+END_SRC
#+NAME: position-bar-bottom
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows :exports none :tangle no
width = 100%
height = 22
radius = 0.0
fixed-center = true
#+END_SRC
When it comes to the bottom bar, I prefer to have it fit my outputs, without
any margin around it. And of course, I have to declare it as being at the
bottom of the screen, hence these modifications. As regards the padding of
our modules, their own margins, and the screen output, they aren’t modified.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
<>
<>
<>
#+END_SRC
However, we do display the system tray on this bottom bar at its right. It
has no padding and it is not detached from the bar (this allows the bar to
be displayed under the icons of the system tray), and their maximum size was
chosen so they are well visible without being too big.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
tray-position = right
tray-padding = 0
tray-detached = false
tray-maxsize = 15
#+END_SRC
*** Colors and display
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-3ec14c14-fd68-449a-b4a8-47d1c8279242
:END:
Nothing changes from the top bar, all the variables stay with the same
values. See [[#h-9f83a6fd-652a-45ca-894b-0a0e0d3f0084][Colors and display]] of the top bar for more information.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
<>
<>
<>
#+END_SRC
*** Fonts and locale
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-518c6613-b0b0-4d5b-a854-a26b3feefaab
:END:
Again, nothing changes from the top bar, so for more info on what’s going
on, see [[#h-c5660945-4785-40f7-b89e-f9f31b85a062][Fonts and locale]] of the top bar.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
<>
<>
#+END_SRC
*** Modules
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-57e48e86-e468-4d71-b088-c9d31d36ec27
:END:
Now, we can get to something interesting again: modules. This bar has a lot
more modules than the top bar. Here is the list of the modules we have on
the bottom bar:
#+NAME: table-modules-bottom
| Module name | Position | Brief description |
|----------------+----------+---------------------------------|
| mpd | left | MPD status indicator |
| filesystem | right | Free storage in our filesystem |
| wlan | right | Name of the active WiFi network |
| eth | right | Local address on Ethernet |
| volume | right | System volume |
| backlight-acpi | right | Screen backlight |
| cpu | right | CPU usage |
| memory | right | RAM usage |
| temperature | right | CPU temperature |
| custom-battery | right | Battery usage |
Here’s the corresponding configuration:
#+ATTR_LATEX: :options breaklines
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
<>
#+END_SRC
All these modules will be explained below.
As you may have noticed, no modules will be displayed in the middle of this
bar.
* Modules
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-7b18b41a-e7d2-4028-8185-4ba732603392
:END:
Before we begin to describe the different modules, I would like to point out
something that will be repeated multiple times if I don’t talk about it right
now: for each module, it is possible to declare the foreground and background
color of the prefix of the modules, as well as the underline color and the
padding of the module. I like these parameters to be rather consistent, so the
code block you will see below will often be reused. The colors refer to the
colors declared earlier, and the padding is minimal.
#+NAME: mod-prefix-col
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows :tangle no
format-prefix-foreground = ${colors.foreground-alt}
format-prefix-underline = ${colors.secondary}
format-underline = ${colors.secondary}
format-padding = 1
#+END_SRC
** Hardware
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-52212ebe-82c1-4663-9b36-61cfb990ac04
:END:
*** Battery
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-1a177975-be38-44c2-bac7-9743dae1ef69
:END:
This module allows the user to get a battery widget among the polybar
modules that will also send a notification to the user if the battery level
drops below a certain value. This module relies on ~polybar-another-battery~
([[https://github.com/drdeimos/polybar_another_battery][link]]) and its generated binary ~polybar-ab~ which should be in the ~$PATH~.
The first line of the module declaration lets the user name the module
however they want. In this case, the name is ~custom-battery~.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
[module/custom-battery]
#+END_SRC
Since it is not a core module, we have to declare it as a custom script so
polybar knows what to do with it.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
type = custom/script
#+END_SRC
We now can specify the script execution, and whether or not the script will
be continuously outputting something. In our case, the answer to this last
question is yes.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
exec = polybar-ab -polybar -thr 10
tail = true
#+END_SRC
The ~-thr 10~ specifies the threshold for polybar-ab at which it should warn
the user about the battery level of the computer.
Of course, users on desktop computers won’t need this module which is aimed
at laptop users. Feel free to remove it if you do not need it.
*** Filesystem
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-e007ebb2-bc1a-4e1d-84e7-1332a4682511
:END:
This module allows to display information about our filesystem, including
(and this is what I use this module for) displaying the used space and
remaining space on different mount points. This module is an internal module
to polybar, so let’s declare it as such:
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
[module/filesystem]
type = internal/fs
#+END_SRC
We can specify how often the filesystem is to be checked with the variable
~interval~. I prefer it not to check it too often in order to not ping too
often my drives, but I want it to be often enough so it is somewhat
responsive. This is why I settled on a 20 seconds interval.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
interval = 20
#+END_SRC
We now have to indicate where our different filesystems are mounted. In the
case of my main computer /Marpa/, I have two partitions, the root partition
and the home partition. But on my travel laptop, I only have the root
partition, hence the usage of the below Elisp code that determines based on
the computer it is running whether or not the second mount point to my home
partition should be included.
#+NAME: include-home-partition
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :tangle no :exports code
(if (string= system-name "Marpa")
"mount-1 = /home")
#+END_SRC
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
mount-0 = /
<>
#+END_SRC
Now we can set the format of our module. There are two mains formats, one
for mounted and one for unmounted mountpoints. For both, we’ll simply use
their label.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
format-mounted =
format-unmounted =
#+END_SRC
When it comes to the mounted partition, we want to display the name of the
mountpoint and how used it is, both in terms of gigabytes and percentage.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
label-mounted = 💽 %mountpoint%: %used%/%total% (%percentage_used%%)
label-mounted-foreground = ${colors.foreground}
label-mounted-underline = ${colors.secondary}
#+END_SRC
If the volume is unmounted (which should be worrying considering the
mountpoints chosen), then we’ll simply have a message telling us about that,
and the foreground color will use the alternative foreground color described
earlier.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
label-unmounted = %mountpoint% not mounted
label-unmounted-foreground = ${colors.foreground-alt}
#+END_SRC
*** Xbacklight
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h-8c6dd375-381c-47c4-861d-fda6e7283e9e
:END:
This module is used in order to display the level of brightness of a screen.
It is not used by itself, but rather by other modules, such as [[#h-9adad94d-961c-44a7-aed1-91a8f22b4eef][ACPI
backlight]]. First of all, this module is an internal module for xbacklight.
It will also display the brightness percentage, prefixed by a sun emoji.
Lastly, it will be underlined by a green line.
#+BEGIN_SRC conf-windows
[module/xbacklight]
type = internal/xbacklight
format =